


so you find control when you're holding a knife (you're a strange one, little girl)

by coronaofastar



Category: The Last Hours Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Light Angst, evidently that is not a tag. how disappointing of you /j, giving a child a knife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29461311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coronaofastar/pseuds/coronaofastar
Summary: “Mother’s in a mood,” Jesse whispered.“I heard. What did you say that upset her?”Jesse sighed. Grace felt the exhalation, the shudder through his bones. He’d always been thin, and being sick hadn’t helped matters any. She made a small, private resolution to make sure he finished dinner tonight. “I can barely remember. I don’t know that I was thinking straight.”“You’re avoiding the question,” Grace said bluntly. Jesse tensed, just for an instant, but it was the only confirmation she needed. “Tell me, Jesse.”Jesse huffed a laugh that barely avoided turning into a cough. “Mercy me, madame, I wasn’t aware this was a trial.”Jesse Blackthorn wears his mother down by seventeen and seals his fate, yes. But before that.(Who taught Grace to wield a blade inMidnight Heir?)
Relationships: Grace Blackthorn & Jesse Blackthorn
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11





	so you find control when you're holding a knife (you're a strange one, little girl)

**Author's Note:**

> (edit 02/17/2021: y'all the grace and Jesse excerpt????? this fic is so incredibly big brain)
> 
> I uh. I genuinely don't know what this is. "maggie and I were yelling about x thing again" is and has been my explanation for a lot of these fics, but fun fact! this is technically my first tlh fic, because I started it before chog even came out. anyway it is now my solemn duty to fill the grace & jesse gen tag. jesse is sixteen here, grace is nine.
> 
> must there be a plot? can't there just be child, unknowable?
> 
>  **cw:** some discussions of death (to skip, stop reading after "There was a beat of silence" and pick back up at "Jesse gave her an amused look"). take care of yourselves!

_ “—am your mother, and no child of mine will become a Shadowhunter. Not in this house!” _

A door shut with a forceful  _ snap,  _ a sound that seemed to hold every ounce of disapproval. Grace flinched, though the tense coil in her chest loosened and she found herself breathing again. She pressed harder against her bedroom door, counted silently until Tatiana’s footsteps had faded away downstairs. Then quick and quiet she eased the door open, crept down the hall, glanced back once just to make sure Mama was nowhere close. There would be consequences if she was caught disturbing Jesse.

There was no light coming from beneath Jesse’s door, but Grace opened it anyway—could not stand in the hallway waiting to be discovered, rapped smartly twice and turned the knob. “Jesse?”

The pencil-thin slant of witchlight from the hall fell across Jesse in his darkened room, lying motionless in bed. But he was not asleep; he turned to look at her when she called his name, one green eye gleaming almost preternaturally. “Come in, quick,” he rasped. “Before Mother sees you.”

The room plunged back into darkness as Grace closed the door behind her, but Jesse had his witchlight in hand a second later, wrapped in some gauzy fabric to dim the glow. He’d been ill as of late, and the room smelled medicinal, of herbs and tinctures. He propped himself up, the light casting strange hollows beneath his eyes and at his throat, and patted a space on the bed.

Grace curled up next to him, and he put his thin arm around her. Across the room she could see an abandoned tray atop the dresser, a half-eaten bowl of soup. He’d not the appetite. The only sound, for a moment, was the slightest wheeze to Jesse’s breathing.

“Mother’s in a mood,” Jesse whispered.

“I heard. What did you say that upset her?”

Jesse sighed. Grace felt the exhalation, the shudder through his bones. He’d always been thin, and being sick hadn’t helped matters any. She made a small, private resolution to make sure he finished dinner tonight. “I can barely remember. I don’t know that I was thinking straight.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Grace said bluntly. Jesse tensed, just for an instant, but it was the only confirmation she needed. “Tell me, Jesse.”

Jesse huffed a laugh that barely avoided turning into a cough. “Mercy me, madame, I wasn’t aware this was a trial,” he teased. “Alright, I relent. I was...I tried to persuade her, again, about letting me be Marked.”

Grace made an involuntary sound, a sharp little intake of breath. Mama wouldn’t have liked that, no.

“I know, I know, it was foolish to press her,” Jesse was saying. He sounded weary. “I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t know that I was thinking at  _ all. _ It just...came out, somehow.”

Grace turned her head, against his arm. She said, “Do you really want to become a Shadowhunter so much?”

There was a frown in Jesse’s voice, and maybe a touch of surprise. “I do. You know this, Gracie.”

“Yes, but...why?”

“Why?” Jesse echoed. “Well, we  _ are  _ Shadowhunters, Grace. It’s who we are.”

Grace shook her head. “We aren’t, not really,” she pointed out. “If we were, you wouldn’t be trying to become one. You can’t become something you already are.”

There was a beat of silence. Jesse drew a slow, measured breath. “I don’t want to die like this.” His voice was small. “Having lived a quiet, nothingless life and then wasted away by twenty. I want to—I want to  _ matter.  _ To die on my feet, Grace, do you see?”

His voice had risen with a fevered intensity. His hair, black as a raven’s wing, stuck across his forehead with a sheen of sweat. He looked at Grace, then, and whatever he saw in her face made him subside. “We are born to die warriors, on battlefields facing demons. Not in sickbeds, of fevers and sickness. Not so…mundane.”

Grace was thinking about Jesse, of each time she’d crept into his room when he’d been ill. Rasping breaths, glassy eyes, white as a skeleton. Some small, scared part of her had thought he would die, each and every time. But Jesse always lived. He was alive now. She said nothing.

Jesse gave her an amused look, despite the exhaustion in his eyes. “You can’t understand it. It’s alright.” He ruffled her hair, pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “At least you entertain my thoughts. Mother never does. If I mentioned any of this to her, she’d be furious.”

She didn’t know which it was that drove her to say it—whether she genuinely wanted to feel what Jesse did for Shadowhunting, or if she simply wanted to spite Mama, her own private rebellion. What she said was, “But I want to understand.”

Jesse paused. Looked thoughtful. “Do you?”

It was not so much a question as a statement. Jesse gave her the witchlight to hold, let her cradle it in her cupped hands like a star, and reached between them to dig beneath the pillows. “Promise you won’t tell Mother?” he asked, and when Grace nodded, produced a dagger in a black leather sheath.

Grace had seen Jesse’s birthright, the Blackthorn sword. She’d seen its gleaming blade and the thorn-patterned hilt; Mama kept it in pride of place high above the mantle, said it was what Rupert Blackthorn would have wanted. This dagger was clearly no family relic, its polished wooden hilt unadorned except for a set of initials scratched near the crossguard:  _ GJL.  _ Utilitarian, and perfectly serviceable.

“Where did you find this?” Grace said. “I thought Mama cleared the house of weaponry.”

“Not this one.” Jesse’s eyes were gleaming with mischief. He looked more animated than he had in days. “Let me show you.”

Somehow she ended up with her brother’s arms around her, leaning back against his chest. Somehow she was holding the dagger out, with the blade pointed at an unseen enemy. The hilt fit perfectly in her little hand. “Good,” Jesse said. His hands were on her forearms; he guided her other arm up into a defensive position. “Don’t lock your elbow—there we go. It depends where to aim, if you’re fighting a demon. Different demons, different weak spots.” His voice was patient, low and even. “But soft spots in general—any soft spot will do. Stab and withdraw. Alright?” He put his hands on her shoulders for a moment, gently pushing them down. “Now, when I give the word.  _ Cut.” _

Grace did. She felt abruptly foolish, attacking something that wasn’t there like a kitten learning to scratch, but Jesse only said, “Good. Again.  _ Cut.” _

__ She did it again, and closed her eyes. Jesse said, “Cut,” and she tried to conjure demons, images she knew from the Codex. Jesse said, “Cut,” and she tried to imagine them present, tried to imagine fighting them. Jesse said, “Cut,” and all she could see, unbidden, was the stern gray countenance of her mother. She bit her lip to banish Mama from her head.

Jesse touched her lightly on either side of her shoulders, stilling her. When Grace opened her eyes, she found him leaning back against the pillows, looking worn out but smiling. “That’s enough practice today,” he said. “It’s all I can teach you from this bed.”

“I think I understand a little,” Grace hedged, and weighed the dagger in her hand. She knew what she should do next: return it, leave Jesse to rest, and sneak back to her room. But for whatever reason, she was reluctant. “May I,” she started, and looked up almost shyly to see Jesse watching her with knowing amusement. “May I keep the dagger?”

“Don’t let Mother catch you with it,” said Jesse on a yawn, which was a yes. Grace helped tug the covers further up over him and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “And be careful,” he added, anxiously, as she turned for the door. “It isn’t a toy.”

“I know,” Grace said. She pressed her ear to the door and listened a minute, but heard nothing. The hallway was likely clear. “Rest well, Jesse.”

There was a smile in her brother’s voice. “Swords, next time.”

She made it to her bedroom without incident, shut the door noiselessly and whirled around, clutching the dagger to her chest, her heart thudding. She didn’t understand Jesse’s proclivity for Shadowhunting anymore than she had, but she did not know how to explain it, either, how natural the dagger felt in her grip. How it felt like an extension of her, rather than a weapon.

Grace glanced back at the door. She knew she should squirrel the dagger away as quickly as she could, lest Mama intrude any second, but…

Her feet shifted—though she did not know it—into a fighting stance. She brought her arms up the way Jesse had shown her, straightened her back, tilted her chin up. Closed her eyes. Grace swiped out.  _ Cut. _

**Author's Note:**

> so like uhh psa don't. don't give knives to your kid siblings folks sdhfgshdfs it is a Public Health Hazard. the hazard is that I am not very tall and one kid with a knife could eviscerate me, which is not medically advised, and I am the Public so it is a health hazard to Me, the Public
> 
> oh, and GJL! if you know, you know :)


End file.
